An Eighth Shot of Espresso: Coffee and Creativity on Mum's Third Shift

If all you look at are numbers statistics popularity you can be primed for disappointment. Four views three of those blogs promoting crypto and AI. Negativity and drama fueling clicks and arguments. Pandering to an audience hungry for content. Bad news generate revenue good news generate grumbling "this never happened. give me proof it did". Bite sized chunks for a ant sized attention span. Flashy music and graphics fake smiles and outrage hollow laughter covers unease. Desensitized to the horrors that life can unleash. "It could be worse" backseat analysts pass judgment. The hidden gems are buried in the dross: you have to make the effort to find them. If you want to open your mind and your heart and lift your spirits defy the algorithm.

Broken down, recombined into something you neither expected...or wanted.  Words broken down recombined into a pleasing appearance with no soul. When you release it to the world you let go of a part of yourself. You smile bitterly in pride and joy as it takes on a life of its own. But when that life is collected by hands twisted and spit out "Hey look what I've done!" A grotesque mockery of what it was a hollow reflection of what you accomplished. Congratulations your lovely creation has been destroyed by the soulless machine.

     It's been a while, but I'm reviving this writing blog. I've been posting on Wordpress for about a year now, but with this recent news  about how both Wordpress and Tumblr plan to sell content to AI companies, I'm going to gradually migrate all of my writing back here to Blogger. I've changed my settings on WP to prevent third parties from accessing my writing, but better safe than sorry.      I've heard stories from other authors about AIs using their work to 'train' their programs like Chat GPT. As a former teacher, I've read my colleagues' complaints about their students using AI for assignments, despite being told not to use it. The news about WP is disheartening, to say the least.     The debate over AI extends to art, and I constantly hear about how other artists' work is used for these programs, usually without the artists' permission. As a result, I've also been more reluctant to post my art publicly, even with protection ...